The Roundhouse

Ilya Kabakov is a contemporary phenomenon not just because of his originality or the way he, in Chekhovian fashion, constructs a story out of subtle allusions and seemingly insignificant details. Another part of his success is how he manages to reinvent himself and his art with each project. One has come to expect Kabakov to probe the Soviet condition or its legacywhich he willingly doesbut with each new installation it is practically impossible to predict how he will transform past experience into art that feels timeless.

The fictional town of Nobson Newtown is more than the collection of dwellings and other sites depicted in Paul Noble’s highly detailed and laboriously executed large-scale pencil drawings. The buildings as we see them are isolatedeach confined to its own sheet of paperwhile occupying a place in Noble’s larger conception of the space of the entire mapped-out townscape. Like all new entities, the town hasn’t risen out of nothing; rather, it sits on the site of an older community, where, we are told, the members’ activities had revolved around the veneration of a wormlike deity. In the